A preparative chiral separation of hydroxychloroquine using supercritical fluid chromatography.

A robust supercritical chromatography (SFC) method using an Enantiocel C2-5 column was developed for the multigram separation of the enantiomers of hydroxychloroquine (HCQ), affirming its use as a scalable technology and ability to provide quantities of each enantiomer for clinical evaluation. The enantiomers of HCQ were collected on a gram scale with greater than 99% enantiomeric excess. The S and R enantiomer elution order was confirmed using optical rotation determinations with comparison to previously determined assignments.